in
anticipation of the event which was to prove him a man of men, if not
one of the world's greatest mechanical geniuses.

Meantime, Oswald was steadily improving in health, if not in spirits. He
had taken his first walk without any unfavourable results, and Orlando
decided from this that the time had come for an explanation of his
device and his requirements in regard to it. Seated together in Oswald's
room, he broached the subject thus:

"Oswald, what is your idea about what I'm making up there?"

"That it will be a success."

"I know; but its character, its use? What do you think it is?"

"I've an idea; but my idea don't fit the conditions."

"How's that?"

"The shed is too closely hemmed in. You haven't room--"

"For what?"

"To start an aeroplane."

"Yet it is certainly a device for flying."

"I supposed so; but--"

"It is an air-car with a new and valuable idea--the idea for which the
whole world has been seeking ever since the first aeroplane found its
way up from the earth. My car needs no room to start in save that which
it occupies. If it did, it would be but the modification of a hundred
others."

"Orlando!"

As Oswald thus gave expression to his surprise, their two faces were
a study: the fire of genius in the one; the light of sympathetic
understanding in the other.

"If this car, now within three days of its completion," Orlando
proceeded, "does not rise from the oval of my hangar like a bird from
its nest, and after a wide and circling flight descend again into the
self same spot without any swerving from its direct course, then have I
failed in my endeavour and must take a back seat with the rest. But it
will not fail. I'm certain of success, Oswald. All I want just now is a
sympathetic helper--you, for instance; someone who will aid me with
the final fittings and hold his peace to all eternity if the impossible
occurs and the thing proves a failure."

"Have you such pride as that?"

"Precisely."

"So much that you cannot face failure?"

"Not when attached to my name. You can see how I feel about that by the
secrecy I have worked under. No other person living knows what I have
just communicated to you. Every part shipped here came from different
manufacturing firms; sometimes a part of a part was all I allowed to be
made in any one place. My fame, like my ship, must rise with one bound
into the air, or it must never rise at all. It was not made for petty
accomplishment, or the